By Lukas Fiala
One of the topics I set out to cover more closely this year was China’s evolving role in international security, especially considering Beijing’s Global Security Initiative. Two events over the last week have given me yet another excuse to revisit the longstanding debate on the nature and future of Chinese security partnerships.
The first was the widely analyzed military escalation between India and Pakistan, especially reports of a Pakistani J-10CE fighter jet achieving its first known combat kill by shooting down at least one Rafale fighter operated by India. While it is currently unclear what exactly contributed to this event and whether Indian rules of engagement or pilot errors also played a role, the news was widely perceived as underscoring China’s military prowess and the strong Pakistan-China defense relationship.
Beyond the efficacy of the individual weapons system, Pakistan’s access to Chinese support infrastructure and enabling services such as the military version of Beidou highlights a shift in Chinese arms sales towards providing more complex, “systematised” equipment, which offers opportunities for deeper integration with Chinese technology ecosystems.
The second-order effects of this type of arms diplomacy are less clear, however. If in the future a country such as Pakistan uses advanced Chinese defense technology in an all-out war and requires the assistance of Chinese original-equipment-manufacturers (OEM) to keep systems operational, will China be able to maintain its hands-off approach to security cooperation to avoid being dragged into a regional conflict? At what point does functional economic integration of two countries’ defense-industrial bases produce relevant political spillovers and to what effect?
Whether Beijing wants to or not, deeper defense engagement may come with just the sort of trade-offs alliance partners encounter when their friends go to war.
The second event was the publication of China’s latest defense whitepaper – which should perhaps be called a national security whitepaper, given its focus on the topic. The first such paper since 2019, the publication provides an authoritative write-up of how Beijing thinks about security and defense issues at the moment.
Much can be said about the paper – and I hope to do so in a separate piece – but in the above context, I was struck by the balancing of two competing images of China we commonly associate with the larger debate on the GSI. While the focus on national security reflects Chinese President Xi Jinping’s own thinking on the topic over the last few years, it also raises the question of how China will harmonize the drive to create a self-sufficient garrison state with its stated ambition to become a world-class or at least first-tier military power.
Take a recent report by the IISS, for instance, in which the authors conclude that China’s engagement across the Middle East and North Africa will likely remain focused on economics, with defense of lesser significance in the coming years. In the context of China’s enduring priorities – especially the re-unification with Taiwan and territorial ambitions in the South China Sea – it is not unreasonable to suggest that security cooperation further afield will fall by the wayside.
And yet, the assertive promotion of the GSI and China’s indirect role in the war in Ukraine – through support of Russia’s defense industrial base – and the India-Pakistan conflict – through its close relationship with Islamabad – also offer a glimpse of a future of China as a more engaged security actor across other regions.
Ultimately, even if China eschews its status as a quasi-ally to Pakistan, it may well face entanglements in the event of a major conflict. Whether Beijing wants to or not, deeper defense engagement may come with just the sort of trade-offs alliance partners encounter when their friends go to war.
The point of these reflections is to realize that our assessments of China are shaped by competing and – perhaps to some degree – conflicting imaginaries of China’s future. Once we destabilize our prior-held beliefs, we can see beyond simple metaphors in favour of appreciating the insights from contrasting viewpoints and debates.
Lukas Fiala is the project head of China Foresight at LSEIDEAS.
